Sunday is never a good night for going out to dinner in a strange city. Stockholm did not let us down.

We were up early on Monday morning so wanted to stay close to the hotel so as to avoid too much walking and we felt confident there would be plenty of choice even if it ended up being being one of the many of Thai or Sushi places there seemed be round each corner.

It started raining as we walked out of the hotel and all of the places we had half seen out of the corner of our eye seemed to be closed. We ended up with a toss up between a Swedish Indian and more meatballs. We went for the meatballs.

The meatball place got off to a friendly start as we were told the kitchen was closing at 9.00 so we would have to be quick. We were.

The meatballs came with a cream sauce and mash potatoes. The previous evening in Pelikan I had had some of the best mashed potato I have had. I am not always a great fan of the potato mashed and so I decided to do away with tradition and asked if I could have some chips with my meatballs. The woman serving us looked slightly perplexed and so I reminded her we were English and that’s what we did.

The chips were very good. Hot and crisp all the way through and went well with the meatballs.

A week later and I am making mashed potato at home. Yesterday we had a gift of a box of potatoes, green beans and onions, all home grown. So I decided to make a Shepherd’s Pie. The lamb came from Edge & Sons and most of the rest out of the box with the potatoes.

I cooked the lamb last night so as to give a good 24 hours to develop its flavour. I did the potatoes this afternoon. They were cooked more quickly than I expected so some of them turned to mush but they still taste pretty good. The most satisfying part of a good Shepherd’s Pie is patterning the potato with the tines of a fork.

It is all in the oven now warming up and we should be eating it in 20 minutes or so. We have had some late September sunshine today so this may be our last meal this year with a glow of heat from the garden.